English Fictions of Communal Identity, 1485-1603 / Edition 1

by Joshua Phillips

Overview

Challenging a long-standing trend that sees the Renaissance as the end of communal identity and constitutive group affiliation, author Joshua Phillips explores the perseverance of such affiliation throughout Tudor culture. Focusing on prose fiction from Malory's Morte Darthur through the works of Sir Philip Sidney and Thomas Nashe, this study explores the concept of collective agency and the extensive impact it had on English Renaissance culture. In contrast to studies devoted to the myth of early modern individuation, English Fictions of Communal Identity, 1485-1603 pays special attention to primary communities-monastic orders, printing house concerns, literary circles, and neighborhoods-that continued to generate a collective sense of identity. Ultimately, Phillips offers a new way of theorizing the relation between collaboration and identity. In terms of literary history, this study elucidates a significant aspect of novelistic discourse, even as it accounts for the institutional disregard of often brilliant works of early modern fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754665984
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/28/2010
Edition description:	1
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Joshua Phillips is Associate Professor of English at the University of Memphis, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I Belonging and Belongings; Chapter 1 The Caxtonian Imaginary: Knights and the Dreams of the Abbey-Lubbers; Chapter 2 Staking Claims to Utopia : Thomas More, Prose Fiction, and the Matter of Belonging; Part II Knowing Together, Laboring Together; Chapter 3 William Baldwin and Communities of Fiction; Chapter 4 Anthony Munday, Romance, and the Production of Collective Selves; Part III Broken Music: Re-imagining Collective Subjectivity; Chapter 5 Hoc Opus, Hic Labor Est : Sir Philip Sidney and the Work of Shame; Chapter 6 Thomas Nashe, Thy Unworthy Speaker to the World; conclusion Conclusion;

Editorial Reviews

'... subtle, well written, and informed by a wide variety of scholarship. At a time when we have begun to investigate the possibility that even the great William Shakespeare had coauthors, English Fictions of Communal Identity is a useful reminder that no man - certainly no author - is an island.' Sixteenth Century Journal '... Phillips succeeds in advancing a fresh and stimulating appraisal of the fictional works and their interaction with a sixteenth-century readership. Asserting the capacity for society to have produced texts and meanings which conveyed a sense of collective identity, Phillips uses his evidence to reveal (borrowing Benedict Anderson's concept) 'imagined communities' whose members were alert to collective bonds. ... Phillips skilfully interweaves these theoretical insights with the practical realities of sixteenth-century communal life, including linkages based on clientage, patronage, kinship and marriage, legal institutions, as well as more nebulous links derived from local custom, neighbourly proximity, and friendship.' Parergon

From the Publisher